Day: September 23, 2009

This week I’m working on a giant Excel workbook, and my client wants all the data entry cells named. There are about 600 cells to name, so I’m looking for ways to same some time.
A quick way to name a cell is to click in the Name Box, type the name, the press the Enter key. In the screen shot below, cell C4 is being named as FullName.

Create From Selection

Even quicker is to use the Create Names feature, and name the cells based on the labels in adjacent cells .
Here, the cells with labels, and the data entry cells, are selected (B4:C8).
Then, on the Ribbon, click the Formulas tab, then click Create From Selection. Or, in Excel 2003, click Insert | Name | Create.
In the Create From Selection dialog box, select the location of the labels. In this example, the labels are in the left column of the selected cells. Then click OK to create the names.

Name a Range of Cells

In this example, I named a single cell with each label. You can select multiple cells adjacent to each label, and the label will name the range of cells.

Valid Characters in Names

If the labels contains spaces, they’re replaced with an underscore.
Other invalid characters, such as & and # will be removed or replaced by an underscore character.
For more information on naming cells, see the Learn about syntax rules for names section in the Microsoft article, Define and use Names in formulas.
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